April, 2014

Like my sexual history, the WSOF career of Rousimar Palhares has been brief and emotionally devastating. After being gifted an immediate shot at the WSOF welterweight title against Steve Carl at WSOF 9, Palhares secured said title via a brutal heel-hook in just over a minute. The victory set Palhares up with a fight against fellow UFC castaway Jon Fitch that was scheduled to go down at WSOF 11 on July 5th, but today brought the news that Palhares has withdrawn from the fight to take care of his sick mother.

A reasonable excuse if there ever was one, but one that also apparently pissed WSOF executive vice president Ali Abdel-Aziz right the f*ck off. Aziz, who has publicly spatted with WSOF fighter Josh Burkman (and Vinny Magalhaes) in the past, told MMAFighting earlier today that he is sick of being taken advantage by guys like Palhares with their “bullshit stories” about their “sick mothers” and “impoverished upbringing.” Okay, those quotes were made up, but here’s what he actually said:

We’re getting screwed. I’m trying to put on a fight card and be nice to fighters, and now they don’t want to fight each other.

I’m getting sick of this. If a fighter is not going to respect the promotion, he is going to be shelved for a long time. I will not release anyone to another promotion. Fighters must honor their contracts.

Eesh. I can see where Aziz is coming from here, but for Christ’s sake, we’re talking about Rousimar’s mother here. Show the Mapinguari her due respect, Ali, or suffer the consequences.

Everybody underestimates head movement — but in a one-on-one street-fight, it’s probably the greatest advantage you can have. This little altercation went down recently in Cordoba, Argentina, featuring a guy in a red jacket who slips ‘n’ rips like a pro, and a dude in a white long-sleeve who clearly doesn’t have the same level of kickboxing experience.

Major props to Babes of MMA are in store for enlightening us about ring girl Alisha Dander, a Vancouver, BC native who has strutted her stuff for Maximum Fighting Championship and Aggression Fighting Championship among others. The “#1 Ring Card Girl” over at Never Tap, Alisha is not just your run-of-the-mill pretty face with nothing going on upstairs, but in fact makes her living as a full-time Psychiatric Nurse when she isn’t carrying cards or modeling professionally, which she has been doing since she was 14.

Check out some of our favorite photos of Alisha in the gallery after the jump, and make sure to follow Ms. Dander on Twitter and Facebook.

During a press conference today in Mexico City, UFC president Dana White announced that Cain Velasquez and Fabricio Werdum will appear as rival coaches on the first installment of The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America (aka EL TUF), which will air this fall in Mexico and the United States. Velasquez and Dos Santos will then meet at the show’s Finale, “the week of November 15th,” according to White.

Though no other fights on the card have been booked, White vowed to bring a stacked lineup to Mexico City. “You know I want to come to Mexico with a bang,” he said. “We’re gonna bring some good fights here, I promise you.”

When a media member asked White if the UFC would postpone the event or set up a new headliner if Velasquez got injured before the fight, White tried to ward off the bad juju: “Bite your tongue. Hopefully that doesn’t happen.”

Lots more details to come. Stay tuned.

Update, via MMAFighting: Velasquez vs. Werdum and the finals of The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America will take place at UFC 180, November 15th at Mexico City’s Arena Ciudad. TUF: Latin America will feature bantamweights and featherweights, and will air on Televisa in Mexico beginning the week of August 18th. The show begins filming on May 12th in Las Vegas.

Does it say more about the UFC or its athletes that classy, universally-respected guys like Georges St. Pierre and Brian Stann only feel comfortable discussing their gripes with the organization’s drug-testing policies after they have stepped away from the sport? It’s hard to say for sure, but in any case, Stann has followed suit with GSP, first lamenting the sport’s drug issues as a “major part” of why he retired earlier this month before further explaining himself during an appearance on The MMA Houryesterday.

While Stann refused to name names, he was quick to admit that MMA’s lackadaisical drug-testing has made it easy for many a fighter to cycle on and off PED’s over the years — a trend that will continue to plague the sport until a change is made:

I think the time when you retire coming off a loss and then you say that, what I didn’t want to do was discredit any of my former opponents. You know, specifically seeing that Wanderlei (Silva) was my last fight, I didn’t want to come off like, ‘Hey, I’m making excuses. The only people that beat me were people on drugs.’ I don’t know any of that for a certainty. There’s one time when I fought a guy on TRT when it was allowed, and that’s the only time that I could say substantially somebody was taking something. But, it was a factor.

I’m a clean fighter. I’m 33 years old, and I have seen, in my own training, and in talking and knowing guys in the inner circle, I’ve known what guys are not on, and when they cycle on it. You can feel the difference in the gym and what big a difference it makes, and I do think there are a number of guys who are using just because the testing currently by our athletic commissions is inadequate.

Note: This timeline of MMA’s history is extremely abridged for the sake of brevity. If you’re interested in the topic, Jonathan Snowden’s Total MMA and Shooters, and Clyde Gentry’s No Holds Barred cover MMA history in detail better than I ever could.

MMA History

19th century: Various mixed rules contests take place throughout the United States, ultimately morphing into what we now call professional wrestling. (Seriously, I can’t recommend Shooters enough for information about this phase of combat sports’ evolution.)

1898: Edward William Barton-Wright invents Bartitsu–a martial art combining boxing, judo, savate, and stick fighting and one of the first dedicated “mixed martial arts” in the entire world. This mixing of styles occurs 42 years before the birth of Bruce Lee, the so-called “father of MMA.”

1905: President Theodore Roosevelt conceptualizes MMA on a whim in a letter to his son, Kermit. “With a little practice in [jiu-jitsu], I am sure that one of our big wrestlers or boxers, simply because of his greatly superior strength, would be able to kill any of those Japanese,” he says in reference to watching a Japanese grappler submit an American wrestler named Joseph Grant.

1914: Judo ambassador and all around tough guy Mitsuyo Maeda arrives in Brazil. In the coming years, he’ll begin teaching the Gracie family judo techniques, planting the seeds for BJJ.

Early-mid 20th century:Vale Tudo competitions emerge in Brazil, and ultimately gain popularity. The Gracie family rises to prominence and enjoys success in these “everything allowed” contests.

Maybe it’s just me, because I have a tendency to read too far into things, but based on his recent interview with MMAJunkie Radio, it seems to me that Karo Parisyan is *kind of* bitter over the fact that Ronda Rousey defected from his gym, Hayastan Academy, to train at Glendale Fight Club and in turn become the megastar that she is today.

A little context: You see, Karo Parisyan fancies himself as something like the king of Judo in MMA, and to some degree, his early success in the UFC did help spread awareness of Judo’s practicality in the sport. But Parisyan is also a bit of an egomaniac (see video above), so when Ronda decided to make the leap to GFC after training with Parisyan following her Olympic bronze medal win in 2008, one could expect that Karo might hold it against her. When his cousin, Manny Gamburyan, followed suit, well, you end up hearing stuff like this (emphasis mine):

That’s all good. No animosity toward them. Good for Manny, good for Ronda, because Manny’s always there with her at the trainings and stuff, and Ronda might be on her period and she might take her underwear off and stuff, so Manny helps her out with that stuff, too, like with the tampons and everything else. I’m being a dick to them.

Again, maybe it’s just me, but what in the actual fuck is Parisyan talking about here? He says there’s no animosity between the closely-located camps, then proceeds to insinuate…whatever he is insinuating there? It’s like, does he even know who Ronda Rousey is, bro?

GongKwon Yusul is a modern Korean martial art system that “emphasizes the application of striking, locking and throwing techniques in practical, free-flowing fighting situations,” and is influenced by Western boxing and the grappling techniques of judo and jiu-jitsu. Until this morning, I’d never heard of it. But apparently, 81-year-old country music legend Willie Nelson has been studying it for 20 years and just got his fifth-degree black belt in the martial art in Monday. Luckily, the video above doesn’t portray GongKwon Yusul as a Martial Arts Fail of the Week-worthy embarrassment, though we can’t help feeling a little skeptical when Willie discusses the board-breaking involved in the belt tests.

Whatever keeps the Red Headed Stranger happy and active is fine by us. That being said, we will go to our graves defending the superiority of Kuk Sool Won.